Inspire Dorm Room Envy With This Pico Projector

We have a love affair with big screens. The bigger the better. And one of the easiest ways to get a big screen is through a projector. My family has used one for close to ten years, whether projecting on a wall in our living room or upgrading to an HD projector and some theater canvas. It’s incredible for watching movies, playing video games or gathering your friends over for the big game. With college starting up, students living in dorms are also yearning for the big screen, no easy feat in a room so small. Which is why a pico projector might be the hot ticket to entertainment envy.

It’s been a while since I was a college student, but not so long that I haven’t been in a dorm in a while. Students expect that when they retire to their room after a long day of classes, they’ve got a place to do some homework, sleep or kick back with a movie or some Madden. I’ve seen dorm rooms packed with gear: computers, big screen TVs and thumping stereos as everyone tries to cram as much in that tiny space as possible. Up till now, smart students may go with dual purpose screens — LCD monitors that can take external inputs good for use with both a computer and a game console. But a pico projector might be a great alternative.

Brookstone sent me their HDMI Pocket Projector to check out. I was skeptical. Unpacking their diminutive box and packaging yielded a projector that was essentially the size of an Apple TV or a couple of decks of cards. Packing a Texas Instruments DLP chip, the LED lamp is rated at 85 lumens capable of creating a bright 60-inch diagonal image. The box claimed it can handle video up to 1080p yet only packs a native resolution of 854×480. The only video input is via an HDMI port. The projector additionally can be powered by an internal battery for up to 2 hours and includes a standard tripod mount found on most digital cameras.

I decided to test the projector in my living room, and placed the projector on top of my existing HD projector. My initial reaction upon firing up the Brookstone HDMI Pocket Projector can be summed up in a phrase: it was jaw-dropping. I expected a dim and uninspired picture on my 110″ wall mounted theater canvas. With the lights off, it was easy to forget that the image was driven by something so small. I connected my Apple TV and put on a show streaming from Hulu Plus. The picture was smooth and the color gamut fairly good with reasonable blacks given the subtle ambient light present in my house.

Impressive, but not without its flaws, especially when compared to traditional projectors. I spent a few days experimenting with various input sources and usage scenarios. The native resolution does result in some fuzziness in HD content; BluRay movies aren’t as crisp and there were some artifacts around the edges of moving objects. Colors appeared to be a bit washed out though the effect was not terribly dramatic. There additionally are no zoom or keystone adjustments, so getting a perfectly square image will mean playing with placement in your room. In many ways, it’s an unfair comparison. We’re talking about a $300 portable projector, not a home theater HD projector. I make the comparison only to educate by providing a baseline some readers might be familiar with.

But where the Pocket Projector might not measure up, it delivers in so many other areas. Its portability and ease of use are amazing. It is incredibly simple to operate and the inclusion of a tripod mount is thoughtful. The battery power is more handy than I would have thought, as I frequently showed off the demo unit to colleagues at the university where I work, plugging in my iPhone to the HDMI port using a dock connector adapter and firing up an HD movie. The results were always the same: oohs and aahs on the convenience front with genuine surprise as to the brightness and clarity of such a small device.

Which brings me back to the dorm room. The rated 60″ is spot on; you can go bigger, but I challenge you to find more uninterrupted wall space in a typical dorm, or your kid’s room or rec room. Really, if you want to give your kids the ability to watch movies or play video games on a big screen and not tie up your family’s living room, seriously consider picking up this projector. They can go anywhere with it, even to friends’ houses, and be the coolest tech kids on the block or the res hall.